The Magic of Krynn

stillness with its grasp. Horrified, he saw Tanis, his eyes suddenly still and glazed, his face like a carved death mask, turn.

Flint leaped, diving for Tanis, thinking to pull him away from the deadly hold of the black ghost. But, fast as he moved, he was too late. He felt for a moment the hard, real warmth of Tanis's arm beneath his hand. Then he felt nothing.

'No!' he howled, hitting out at the clammy stone wall in his fear and anger. 'Tanis!' But Tanis was gone, vanished as though he had never been there. 'No!' Flint struck the wall again, not feeling the sharp sting of stone tearing at his knuckles. 'Tanis! Damn! Where are you!'

He would have hit the wall again in fury and an almost blind need to feel something solid and real, but a slim hand grasped his wrist, pulling his fist down.

'No, please stop!' Riana cried, 'Flint, stop.'

Flint rounded on the girl, his eyes flashing dangerously.

'Where is he?'

'He's gone-they took him, the way they took Ka-rel and Daryn. I don't know where he is!'

Voices whispered beneath the screams that filled the air, telling of torture and shattering agony. Gone, Flint thought furiously, holding onto his anger to warm the ice of fear from his blood. Gone! And left me here, damn it!

Down the corridor, toward where the gray light straggled in from some unknown source, he saw a dead torch in an old cresset. Flint ran for it, found another, and snatched them both up. Working quickly, he lighted both and shoved one into Riana's hands.

'Hang onto this,' he growled, 'and don't let it go out. Whatever these demons are, they do their filthy work in the dark. Aye, they had no love for our campfire: they'll keep their distance from our torches. We're going to look for Tanis. And I've no doubt that where we find him we'll find your brother and his friend.'

Riana grasped her torch with both hands, to steady it. In thecareening shadows Flint's eyes were hard and frightening. 'How how will we find him?'

Flint shifted his own torch to his left hand and hefted his battle-axe in his right. 'We'll find him,' he growled. 'Have no doubt about that, girl. We'll find him.' And when I do, he thought, still fanning his anger against his fear, he'll be lucky if I don't kick him from here to Solace forgetting me into this nightmare!

When they began to find the first bodies, Flint's fury turned to hollow fear. Riana, weeping openly now, stood rooted in the corridor, staring at the lifeless husks that had once been the strong bodies of young men. None of the bodies, some mouldering still, some whitened skeletons bleached by time's passage, showed the marks of a fight: no broken bones, no shattered skulls. Not one of them had battled his way to death.

They littered the corridor like discarded toys, used, broken, and cast aside.

Steeling himself to find what he knew he would not be able to bear to see, Flint moved carefully among them, searching. His blood pounded painfully in his head, his breathing was ragged, whispered fragments of prayers to gods few people acknowledge. Slowly, almost gently at times, he toed over one corpse after another, his hands locked in a death-hold on his axe. But none of the bodies was Tanis, and the most recently dead were still too long gone to have been either Karel or Daryn.

Breathing hard with his relief, he went back to Riana, took her hands in his own, and led her past the dead.

'No, there is no use struggling. You cannot move.' Despite his own warning, Karel instinctively tried to reach a hand to the stranger. He grimaced and whispered again, 'Don't try, you'll waste your strength. And you'll need it.'

The words echoed in Tanis's head, bounding and leaping so that he could barely make sense of them. Where was he? He remembered, with heart-stopping clarity, the touch of hard, cold fingers on his wrist, the grip of a skeletal hand, and a groaning,beckoning voice urging him to follow. And he'd followed, incap able of refusal. Then darkness, bitter as dead hope, covered him, filling him with dread and piercing fear.

Flint? Riana? With a dark and hopeless feeling he recalled Flint's words on the cliff: Those phantom raiders seemed to have little interest in Riana… they will have small enough interest in an old dwarf. Where are Riana and Flint? Dead? Dead. He heard his own groan of fear and knew, then, that he could speak.

'Who is that? Where are you?'

'Here, beside you.' Karel's whispered laugh was sour. 'If you could turn your head, you'd see me. As it is, you'll have to be content to stare at the ceiling, friend. Wait until he's deep into the spell again. Then try to move.'

Light, splitting and dancing in all the colors of a rainbow, leaped before Tanis's eyes, arcing and splashing across the field of his vision. He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to shut out the needle-sharp pain. 'Who are you?'

'Karel. Hush!'

'Daryn.' The mage's word was thunder, rolling across the chamber, filling the air with danger. 'Rise!'

Beside him, Tanis heard Karel gasp. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to move. The effort should have taken him to his feet. He was only able to turn onto his side. It was enough to allow him to see the whole chamber, and enough to let him shudder with horror at what he saw.

It was a small man who spoke those commands, and very old. He wore his years with little grace. They lay upon him like unholy burdens. His eyes blazed with his magic, his red robes swirled about him as he lifted his hand.

Crimson blood circled a weakly struggling young man. Daryn, Tanis thought, Riana's brother! The soft murmuring of the mage's chant rose and fell in tones that were sometimes coaxing, sometimes commanding.

Then, with jerky, heartless strength, Daryn staggered to his feet. His hands twitched, his legs threatened to buckle, then stiffened as his feet found their purchase upon the stone floor. Dried rosemary leaves rustled in the mage's hand. The fire in the brazier sighed. With a practiced flourish, he sent the dust of a powdered sapphire, blue and sparkling as a high autumn sky, leaping across the distance between him and the bloody circle. It paused in mid-air, an azure halo above Daryn's head, then settledgently, with great precision, inside the blood circle, to form an other border.

Imprisoned within Gadar's circles of magic, Daryn stood, his face drawn and white. In that moment, complete understanding rippled through him, carving at his face with the sharp tools of terror.

And in that moment, the door that Tanis could barely see across the wide chamber burst open with a splintering crash. Weird light broke along the finely honed blade of Flint's axe, leaping and dancing.

Karel's sob of fear when he saw Riana standing behind Flint might have been the voice of Daryn, standing mute and terrified in double circles of enchantment. Or it might have been the voice of Tanis's own dread. Gadar spun quickly, his eyes wild and filled with hatred and thwarted purpose. White light leaped from his fingers, deadly arrows of flame.

'Flint! Down!'

But Tanis's cry wasn't needed to send the old dwarf dodging and scrambling for cover, dragging Riana with him. Karel slapped his leg hard and shouted,

'Now! Up, friend, we can move!'

The mage screamed, a mountain cat's howl of rage, and turned on Tanis and Karel. Halfway to his feet, Tanis dropped again to the stone floor. White-hot arrows of light darted past his face, stinging and burning, filling the air with a sulphurous, acrid stink. Out of the corner of his eye, Tanis saw Karel bolt across the chamber to where Daryn hung, trapped, in the enchanted circle of blood.

Daryn moaned, and Karel, crouched outside the bloody circle, reached out his hand to his friend. He cried out in pain, flung back by the spitting, stinging force of Gadar's magic.

Riana screamed, and Tanis leaped for the mage, caught him around the knees and brought him crash-ihg to the floor. From some hidden place in his sleeve, Gadar found a knife. Its cold blade flashed once, then again in the dancing torchlight, raking along the back of Tanis's hand.

Hardly feeling the pain, Tanis flipped the mage onto his belly and dashed his knife hand against the floor. The steel blade hit stone and rang loudly. Tanis jerked first one hand, then the other tightly behind the mage's back and held him firmly with a knee in the small of his back.